


agametic.

by SubbyP



Category: Pacific Rim (Movies)
Genre: Asexual Character, Boldly Ignoring The Sequel, Character Study, Discussion of Rape, F/M, Let Them Sleep, M/M, POV Second Person, Panic Attacks, Pre-Canon, Skyscraper-Sized Moms, brief mentions of alcohol, henlo naughty children are you ready for.........italics???, i suppose I should finally get some use out of this account, italics II electric boogaloo, local dumbass has to be informed of own sexual orientation by drift partner, nobody gets raped in this fic!, self-destructive sexual behavior, spot the asexual desperately attempting to write about sexual attraction, the underage is very vague and involves two sixteen-year-olds, thus begins the bit where the author starts with the personal exorcism, vomiting mention, wanton sweater damage, we've got to have the Bummer Stuff before we get to the Happy Stuff
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-05-11
Updated: 2018-11-25
Packaged: 2019-05-05 04:49:59
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 5
Words: 5,701
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14609715
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SubbyP/pseuds/SubbyP
Summary: You don't speak the language. You hold no currency.An asexual life in an allosexual world.





	1. Chapter 1

You lose your virginity at sixteen to your first love, a clever splinter of a girl in short sleeves and long socks. You met her at a board game night, believe it or not, and she makes your spine light up and your throat weightless and hollow whenever she smiles. Sometimes when you’re lonely and wired you wedge yourself into the corner of your couch and pretend the weight of the upholstery is her holding you.

One night in her basement you’re playing Mario Party and making out, and she coaxes your hand under her shirt. It’s warm in there and you have a vague awareness of intimacy as you leave your sweat on her skin. The average age of first sexual encounter is fifteen to nineteen, so from that point you’re following the manual in your mind. _Ask consent, if yes, remove panties. Position hips. Memorize ceiling texture. Tell her she’s beautiful_ (she is), _that she’s sexy_ (you assume she is), _that you love her_ (you do, you do).

Two weeks later she breaks up with you.

She’s sorry, so sorry, she feels like she ruined it, but she wasn’t ready. Which just strikes you as bizarre because nobody is ready to pay taxes or get grey hairs, but they do anyway. Nobody is ready to step into adulthood, but you’re sixteen and smarter than anyone else you’ve ever met, which makes you an adult whether you like it or not. You watch her walk away, and when you get home you put on a Dylan playlist and try to cry over a new kind of hollow. _Don’t think twice, it’s all right._

–

You’re twenty-two and you’re developing a reputation. _“Want to get laid? Just wink at Newt and wait thirty minutes.”_ It’s completely true. One drink, one conversation, and they’re railing you in the backseat of their car while you try your best to sound like a porn star. _Oh yeah, that’s so good, that’s so hot, look at me, look at me._

_Please, God, look at me._

Your every move is an audition and sometimes you even have fun. Someone is bound to make you want it, really want it. As the man said, find a job you love and you’ll never work a day in your life.

Meanwhile, you’re falling in love with a man you’ve never seen. 

You develop a crush on Hermann Gottlieb like, instantly, but you pick up crushes like mosquito bites so it isn’t anything significant to you. The guy is smart and funny and he listens to you, that’s all you need to start hatching butterflies. It isn’t until you’re reading one of his letters and you realize you’ve wedged yourself into the corner of your couch that you know you’re in trouble.

–

_“I’m going to be a few hours’ drive from Boston next Wednesday,”_ he writes, _“and I thought we could continue this discussion in person.”_ There is literally nothing in this entire universe you want more than to hear his voice. You make plans to meet for coffee and then run into your bathroom and shriek for fifteen minutes because you’re meeting the man you’re pretty sure is the love of your life. But somewhere between fussing over your hair and flossing and re-flossing your teeth you must have forgotten that he has a physical body, because when you see him and his hilarious grandpa sweater you come back to earth with a sickening thud. You love this man, and you’re pretty damn sure he likes you, and that means that you’re going to have to have sex with him _and there’s nothing you can do to stop that._

So you spend the entire meeting acting like a massive toolbag. Way to go, boy genius, definitely one for the greatest hits album. Just piss all over another human being’s feelings, anything to avoid sucking a dick, right? It’s really a miracle that he argues back instead of beating you to death with his cane, and more of a miracle that he texts you after a week of offended silence (and four one-night stands that you mostly disassociate through, why are you so useless, why can’t you get it together). 

_“Well I hope you’re proud of yourself,” _he writes, with a level of charity previously unknown to humankind. _“The residue of that danish is never coming out of my sweater.”_ Holy shit, holy shit, this man is the world’s first living Jewish saint.__

__–_ _

__The world is ending and the two of you still can’t stay in the same room (or car, or restaurant, or helicopter, or unamused Marshall’s office) without arguing, but the stuffy bastard lets you call him Hermann and send him memes at three A.M., and you never stop loving him, not for a second._ _


	2. Chapter 2

Here are a few of the things you’re determined not to notice about Hermann Gottlieb:

How he can never seem to get his pants hemmed to the right length, and how his argyle supportive socks peek out from under them.

How bony his wrists are, and how adorably pointy the head of his ulna is in particular when he articulates his distal radioulnar joint with his choppy little thinking gestures.

His “r”s, and the rolling thereof.

That one time they served tater tots in the cafeteria, and how he sorted them by crispiness, eating first the soft ones, then the overly crispy ones, then the “optimal” ones, _oh my God who does that?!_

The incredible molecular awareness in each of the nerves of your back and neck when he peers over your shoulder.

The way his eyes sparkle when someone does something nice for him, or makes a joke that he’s trying to avoid laughing at, and how much you crave the brief moments when you can strike their flint with your clumsy words.

The empty spaces that, one day, he will certainly leave behind.

–

The Wall slowly rises and the domes get mothballed one by one. You spend months in a haze, you and Hermann disassociating together, productive and terrified. _They closed Wellington–they can’t close Wellington–I heard they were closing Jakarta–Kyoto–Seoul–San Diego–they’re moving the San Diego stuff to Tijuana–Tijuana’s gone–Sydney, they won’t close Sydney, Striker Eureka is too effective_ but they close anyway, packing equipment even as the Wall shatters and the cameras roll. 

You get the call from Marshall Pentecost and it’s you and Hermann and Tendo on a plane to Hong Kong, it’s you watching Hermann grind his teeth in his sleep, it’s you wanting to touch his hand or his hair but feeling so acutely the script that has you reciting porn in his bed.

It’s you and a couple hundred other lunatics writing memos at the gates of hell. It’s the greatest scientific treasure trove in human history. It’s the end of the world.

–

You almost kiss Hermann the day the Kaidanovskys arrive with a case of the certified Good Shit, the kind you’re not supposed to be drinking, and he steals a bottle of it and lets you hide with him in his Crabby Drinking Alcove. You almost kiss him the day Tendo’s son is born and the two of you have a laughing fit because there should not be _babies_ flaunting their little _baby toes,_ don’t they know the continents are crumbling? You almost kiss him when your meds run out and your brain is unraveling and he’s the only one who notices and yells at the infirmary staff until someone does something about it. You almost kiss him when you tell him about the Pons unit you made and he looks at you like he cares if you live or die.

You almost kiss him, but you never do, because the thought of performing for this man you love is sickening, and performance is all you can imagine. There’s a breach inside you that you cover with vitriol because it’s so much easier than covering it with tinsel and stage backdrops, worried moans and backward glances and the alchemy of obligatory desire. 

You’re a one-man doomed romance, sick with envy at the Kaidanovskys, at Tendo and Alison, at all the effortless dances leaving you behind. Their pretense of desire is so seamless that it barely looks like a pretense at all. You’re the only one who can’t keep up the masquerade. You’re the only one who was never given a script. You’re the only one who had to infer your own part.

God, you want to want him. God, you want for one thing in life to be conducted with honesty. God, you want desire to be real.


	3. Chapter 3

So, like, whatever, you drift with Mutavore’s brain fragment, okay? Like, who else is going to do it? Who else is smart enough to hold on to even a scrap of self but still (useless, worthless, freakish) resilient enough to handle the neural load?

Who else wouldn’t be missed?

Then you actually throw the switch and it’s the most intoxicating thing you’ve ever experienced. You will never be able to describe it because kaiju don’t need words. Kaiju just spiral out of the rift and have chemical feelings at each other while your infinitesimal ego gets blown about in the wake of their eternal typhoon.

Your body begins seizing and bleeding (you realize dimly, vestigially, _carbon, hideous, discard it_ ) and then someone tears you out of it, one being, one small weak frail alone alone alone alone--

Hermann.

\--

So twenty minutes ago everyone thought your plan was complete lunacy, but now the Marshall is sending you alone into the Boneslums to talk to some UV-painting black marketeer so you can do it again, which, like, don’t anyone rush to thank you or anything. 

Hannibal Chau is a gigantic inexplicably white man with awful shoes who spends his entire interaction with you disregarding you and calling you an idiot, which is only distinguished from most people’s reaction to you by him sticking a switchblade up your nose.

But you don’t have much time to debate skin parasites and bone powder ( _male potency bone powder??_ ) because all of a sudden the breach tears and you have a horrible disorienting moment of _being your own prey._

You knew you could drift with a kaiju. Not even you considered what your drift hangover was going to be like.

_Everything is so small_ (you’re running through the streets in blind animal terror) _so dry, so still, only little things move here_ (you con your way into a shelter, which you will be ashamed of if you regain the capacity for thought) _where is the littlest one?_ (”Little guy,” thanks, it’s not only enough that you have to be sacrificed to a kaiju but they also have to insult your height?) _where is the one who spoke?_ (you can’t see, you can’t see, oh god, you can’t even look your death in the face)

_where is your elder child?_

It’s not until after Otachi tears off the shelter roof, sniffs you, and turns to go that you realize just how fucking bizarre that last thought was.

\--

Probably you should be thinking of the unprecedented scientific opportunity, or how this is going to save the world, or that you might die, but all you can think about as you put the helmet on with shaking hands is _he cares about me_ and _please, god, don’t let him see._

Don’t let him see you get cut away and discarded, a teratoma on your mother’s marriage. Don’t let him see the desperate attempts at self-medication, the cooking wine and chewing on your fingers and 3 AM screaming fits in your dorm bathroom. Don’t let him see the glazed, dead-eyed, manic desperate fuck artifice as you fail to want like a human being.

You’re so focused on and terrified of being found out that you don’t even really wonder what he will show you until you’ve already pushed the button.

\--

_You’re eight and you’re dreaming of flight._

_You’re curled against the bathroom wall, trembling, hating yourself for being frightened of people you could reason rings around, hating yourself for being spindly and collapsible and beige and an easy mark, hating yourself._

_You’re making a damn scene, you’re having a motherfucking row in front of God and everyone, you’re spitting with anger at the perfection you can never reach as he sits there and lays out the life you will have._

_You’re defending your thesis. You’re breaking up with your girlfriend. You’re opening a letter from America, the most important letter you will ever receive._

_You’re watching yourself walk through the cafe door. You’re energetic and frank and inexplicably hostile and honestly kind of irritating, and you’re not intimidated, and you can keep up, and you’re in love._

_You’re sharing a bottle of dubious alcohol--”here’s to drinking on meds”-- and your eyes--and your lips--you’re so warm--you’re humming in resonance, disintegrating into your presence--you want to bury yourself in your skin and your heart and between your legs and never let go never be apart--_

_You’re seizing in the model cockpit [you’re watching yourself seizing on the floor] you can’t feel your leg [you’re bleeding from your head] your nerves will never recover [your heart will never recover] you were a fool [you were a fool] you cannot control what you have built [you could not stop this from happening] you will never be a pilot [you will die and take the water from the world and leave it all to dry up and blow away]_

**You are a universe.**  
\--

Only Hermann could find, in the wreckage of an entire office building, the appropriate thing to throw up in.


	4. Chapter 4

       If the Drift hangover from Mutavore’s brain was a violent dissociation, your Drift hangover with Hermann is the opposite of that. You’re completely grounded, both of you together, into one clumsy body with eight limbs and two mouths yelling into a microphone. There’s no need and no capacity to remember which one of you has the bad leg or the bifocals or the allergy to shrimp or the bizarre aversion to hair-dryers. It’s all you.

       The two of you distill as Mako hammers on Raleigh’s pod, but you don’t go far, just enough to tell whose thoughts are whose. He’s still there beside you, feeling worry in the base of his throat while you feel it in your guts. It’s only been one Drift but you can barely access the memory of his absence, like you’re so drenched in rain you can’t remember being dry.

       You hold him for the first time as the clock stops, arm around his shoulder, grinning, and not caring, just for that moment, what touching him might lead to.

–

       Yeah, the world not ending is probably the most baller reason for a party ever, but honestly your usually indefatigable passion for loud fun and making a fool of yourself has been dampened by the two Drifts, the complete mental and emotional exhaustion, and the switchblade up the nose. You need a shower and some dreamless sleep. Knowing the kind of parties Tendo throws even when he  _hasn’t_  just helped save humanity, 12 hours of sleep shouldn’t make you miss all the action anyway. You squeeze your way through the ecstatic crush and out into the hallway. 

       It doesn’t actually register to you that Hermann is beside you until you’re nearly to your dormitory door. His footsteps and the tap of his cane and the warmth of him are just part of the experience of being you as far as your limbic system is concerned, like the taste of your mouth and the sound of your heartbeat. But now you’re standing in front of a bedroom door with him and you’re very aware of your tongue.

       Neither of you speak. You can hear the party going on several military-grade rooms away. Humanity just repelled an alien invasion–defeating soundproofing with sheer joy is nothing.

       You remember how you looked to him the night you shared that dubious alcohol. You remember how he loved you. You remember what else he felt. 

       You have never felt it as yourself. You will never feel it again.

       He’s feeling it now.

       “Would you–” he pauses. His eyes dart away from your face and fixate on your door. You can feel the raw edges of his nerves brush against your worn-out mind. He’s kind of terrified, and ashamed of that. You never want him to be frightened again. You never want him to be frightened of you.

       With an effort that you can feel in your back teeth, he wrenches himself into eye contact. You watch his pupils dilate, expanding towards the red ring in his iris, never quite touching. You wonder if your own are doing the same.

       “Would you find it terribly forward of me,” he restarts, twitching his wide mouth like he’s just been shocked, like you’re giving off static, like you’re white noise, but no moment has ever been this clear– “if I kissed you?”

_Please, God, please kiss me,_  you think.  _Wrap your arms around me and kiss me and don’t stop until we meld together, like anglerfish, and I will live for a thousand years just on loving you._

_Don’t kiss me. Don’t touch me,_ you think.  _I can’t be false to you, not now, not after having been in your head, but false is all I know how to be. Don’t have those alien feelings you have about me, because I have shared your soul but I still can’t feel that way, not even about you._

_Kiss me,_  you think,  _force me, make me feel the way you did, if that’s what desire is then give it to me, tear it out of yourself and give it to me, make it so I have no choice. Fix me._

_Get it over with,_ you think _, fuck me and get it over with, since you’re determined to make me into something you regret, I’ll give you the performance of a lifetime even as I choke on it._

_(Don’t) stop looking at me. (Don’t) stop waiting for me. (Don’t) stop loving me._

       “Dude, you just puked like half an hour ago,” you say.

       He snort-laughs (God, you love him), and you feel the embarrassment and the tentative relief behind it alight like a spark on your chest. “I did, didn’t I?” 

       You feel yourself start giggling too. He clears his throat, trying to stop laughing and succeeding until he meets your eyes again, at which point you both totally lose it and start howling with laughter. The Marshall is dead, the Weis and Kaidanovskys are dead, Chuck’s dead, the breach is closed, one of you finally said something after the decade-plus you’ve apparently been pining for each other unnoticed, and Hermann Gottlieb has been cockblocked by his own upper esophageal sphincter.

        Hermann makes a valiant effort to compose himself. “Right, seriously,  _seriously_ , in that case may I–for God’s sake  _stop laughing for just one minute–”_ which just makes you laugh harder, until your knees give out and tears come to your eyes–”may I use your bathroom?”

        This makes your laughter stop. He wants to use your bathroom. He wants to come into your quarters and use your bathroom to clean his mouth so he can kiss you, and he loves you, and you love him, and now you’re going to have to do what you’ve been terrified of and fuck him because that’s what people do when they’re in love.

        You stand, numbly. Your hand is on the door handle. You’re going to open this door and he’s going to wash up and then you’re going to be fucked by him because if you don’t–

        If you don’t, if you can’t force yourself to want him, if your performance isn’t good enough, if the gilt and the stage dressing falls away now that you know what wanting is and you stumble over your lines, unable to fake it anymore, knowing now that it is just you, that you’re the fraud in a world of authentic desire–

        He will see you, he will touch the hollow core of you, and he will go.

        You see his smile freeze out of the corner of your eye.  _Shit, fuck, useless,_  you forgot he could  _hear,_  he heard your sickness and your fear and you’ve already blown it. He’s shocked, he’s confused, he’s going to walk away–

        “Newton, please look at me.”

       He’s still standing there.

       Why is he still standing there?

       He’s crying. Why is he crying? Is he angry at you? Does he pity you? Is he just carried away by the tears that you can feel, even now, leaving their residue on your face? Is he grieving for the man you can’t be?

       Why is he reaching towards you? Is he going to slap you? Is he going to force you to your knees? 

       You close your eyes. You feel his hand cup your face. 

       He’s wiping your tears away.

       This is when your legs give out again, and you collapse forward into him like the remnants of a building after a fire.  _Don’t start sobbing,_  you think, but it’s too late; you’re shivering and heaving into pieces. Somewhere on the edges of your overfull heart, you can feel his bewilderment and his guilt. What does he have to be guilty for?

       He’s stroking your back. His face is pressed into your hair. He’s saying something. He’s saying–

       He’s saying–

       “Darling, what have I done to make you fear me so?”

       No, no, no, nothing, he hasn’t, he hasn’t, it’s you, it’s your fault it’s you please  _please God don’t let him go you’ll do anything just don’t let him leave–_

       “No!”

       He flinches. You had to force that word out, which led to you pretty much yelling it like four inches from his ear. “What?”

       “No! Like??” _Useless, useless,_  you can’t even talk, you can’t– “I–I did–I did–you have–I’m, I’m, I’m, I have–I have–”

        “Please breathe, dear–”  _dear, darling,_  you can’t stand it, you’re going to destroy it– “we have all the time in the world now–” but you don’t you don’t you don’t–

        “I HAVE TO LET YOU FUCK ME SO YOU’RE GOING TO LEAVE.”

       Nobody has ever accused you of subtlety.


	5. Chapter 5

        There is a cup of tea in your hands.

        How did it get there? You can’t recall. Your short-term memory is soggy and collapsed, like a wad of cotton in a wisdom tooth hole. Your dissociation is carpet-thick. All you can perceive is the tea, the teacup, and a foreign concern rattling in your hollowed-out heart.

       You breathe once, twice. Hermann coalesces into view. He’s staring at you. You want to claw your own skin off and vomit your intestines up like a sea cucumber. Why is he still here? Why does he have tea too? Where did the tea come from? Where the hell are you?

       The answers come to you in inverse order. You’re in your quarters, with the door propped firmly open and Hermann sitting out of the way, giving you clear line of sight to an exit, how did he know oh right he’s in your head; presumably the hot-plate in the lab; because being Prussian Hermann was about five inches from being British anyway and Cambridge just confirmed it; because he loves you.

        _He loves you._ And you were dissociated and pliable and he just sat you down and made you tea and--and--

       And what? Didn’t rape you?

       God, is _that_ what you were waiting for?

       Your hands begin to tremble. The tea slops over the rim of the cup and the man of whom you have been terrified for half your life reaches out abortively to shield you from burns. You feel as though you’ve just noticed a gunshot wound. The love of your life and you’re convinced, _convinced_ that any day now will be the day he’ll rape you and you’ll deserve it. You freak. You hideous, worthless monster, how could you? _How could you think such a thing of him?_

       You’re crying again. Not sobbing, not making any sound at all, but tears are leaking from your eyes and even as you hate yourself your conviction hasn’t gone away. Will it be now? Will it be now? God, you can’t stand to _wait_ any longer, the waiting is worse, you can’t move or make a sound because that will trigger it, but you want it to happen.

      _You want it to happen,_ because then it will be in the past, not bearing down on you from nowhere, everywhere, for twenty years. Then you won’t have to fake anything, pretend anything. Then you can just be an object, not failing, not freakish, no agency with which you will inevitably disappoint.

       All of your brains, all of your talent, all of your ambitions--and you’re just waiting to be a fuckhole in the wall.

       You’re not trembling any longer. You’re shaking, violently. Tea splashes over the cup rim and scalds your forearms. Hermann sets his cup down and makes a grab for yours, but your fingers are clenched around it like talons. Your teeth are metal splinters in your mouth and if you have one more damn emotion your heart is going to explode.

       “Fuck,” you say. “I’m fucking--I’m wasting your tea, dude, that tea is going everywhere, dude--”

       “Put the cup down, Newton.” He’s holding out his hand.

       “Your tea, dude, fuck I’m sorry I wasted all that tea it must have been expensive with the fucking, the fucking _embargoes_ and shit, I don’t mean embargoes I mean like _involuntary_ embargoes dude but the _tea_ \--”

       “ _Bugger_ the tea.” Your head snaps up in shock. This is Dr. Hermann Don’t-You-Dare-Throw-That-Ketchup-Packet-Away-What-If-Tomatoes-Go-Extinct-Then-You’ll-Be-Sorry-Won’t-You Gottlieb and he just-- “I’m worried about _you_ , Newton.”

       “Wh--” Your fingers loosen and the cup falls into Hermann’s waiting palm. “ _Why?_ ”

       “What kind of idiotic question--” you’ve clearly set him off; he’s swinging his free arm around like he’s shifting gears in a VW bus-- “because you’re having a panic attack, why do you _think_ I’m worried?”

       “I don’t know, I don’t know _shit!_ ” _Obviously_ you’re having a panic attack, if the way you’re babbling nonsense and showing no signs of not babbling nonsense any time soon is any indicator. “I don’t know what a _feeling_ is I don’t know what _time_ it is _I don’t know what I’m supposed to be doing right now--_ ”

       “Nothing! You don’t have to do anything!” Gear shift, gear shift, gear shift. “Just...please, Newton, please just be in this room with me.” He reaches out to take your clammy, shaking hand. “Just sit here with me.”

       And so you sit, kicking your heels against the side of your military-issue bed, tears and snot itching away on your face. Your shoulders are locked like the struts of a card table as you hunch over his delicate hand. He rubs his thumb across your stubby fingers and you hate it, you love it, you hate yourself. You came so close today--why couldn’t you have just died then and saved yourself the trouble? How much longer will you have to wait to lose everything?

       The world is looming over you, towering like a kaiju, and now that you’ve come face to face with it you understand what it is to fear as an animal fears.

\--

       Time oozes over you like mud down your back. Your tears dry and, eventually, are not replaced. Your breath stabilizes and your vision depolarizes. Hermann shifts in his chair, wincing. You feel the phantom ache in your hip and your tailbone, and you lean into it like you’re pressing on a bruise.

       The world spins on.

       “Dude,” you croak, inadequately. A weak and sickly smile creeps over your tongue and out of the corners of your mouth.

       Hermann does not look reassured. “Don’t ‘dude’ me, Newton. What in hell was _that_ about?”

       “Uh.” What the fuck are you supposed to say? _I panicked because people have sex? I’m in love with you but eighty percent of me thinks you’re going to rape me? Sorry about that, babe, I just realized that I’ve been living my whole entire life in mortal terror and also I don’t know if I can ever have sex with you?_ “Y’know, I had, I had a panic attack. I have those, dude, you’ve known me for like a third of my life--”

       “Yes, of course, but--” his voice cracks a little-- “why did you have a panic attack at the thought of--at what I can only assume was the thought of kissing me?”

       “It wasn’t you!” A partial truth, but one that is true in the ways that matter. It was _you_ , it was _your_ neuroses and _your_ inhumanity. “I’m not scared of _kissing_ , dude, I’m not a _virgin_ y’know I’ve _done_ shit before, and frankly I really wanted to kiss you, except the vomiting thing, I’m not dealing with that, but, like, kissing isn’t-- I’m not _scared_ of you.”

       Hermann sighs. “We both know that’s a lie.”

       “I’m _not!_ ” You lurch approximately upward, tired eyes wide and blazing.

       “Then _what are you so afraid of?”_ His fingernails bite into your hand. “What else could _possibly_ have--” he’s saying something else but you’re talking over him, you’re shrieking something you don’t know what it is and both of you are getting louder and louder, he’s yanking on your hand-- “ _SHUT UP AND LISTEN TO ME, NEWTON, I’M NOT LEAVING!”_

       His yelling can’t put you off your game. You’re at full speed, several kilometers a minute, words blurring together into a paranoid air raid siren. “I mean you’re not leaving me _now_ dude but like I don’t know if I can _fuck_ okay I don’t know what’s _wrong_ with me I don’t like I don’t know you’re not going to believe I love you if I don’t fuck you and I can’t convince you, dude, I can’t convince you that I love you when I’m a freak like this, please just fuck me dude **just rape me and get it over with!** ”

       He drops your hand. You have never seen him so pale. “What?”

       “I can’t fuck, I can’t--”

       “You’re afraid I’m going to _rape_ you? For--for being, what? For being _asexual?_ ”

       You come to a screeching halt. “....What?”

       “What?” He blinks. “Newton, did you…. Did you not know that?”

       “Dude, like, I haven’t checked but I’m pretty sure I have _gametes_ , dude.” You sit back down with a thud. “I mean I guess I could theoretically be parthenogenetic but I don’t have a _cloaca_ or anything, y’know, I think, unless drifting with the hive mind had more effects than I thought it did, ha ha ha _dude what if I--”_

       Hermann holds up a hand. “Newton, you’re rambling inanely.” You huff. Can’t the guy give you a break? You were literally in mortal terror five seconds ago. “What I mean is--and forgive me if this is too personal--have you ever actually wanted to have sex with anyone?”

       “I haven’t--I mean I haven’t been--” Raped. Yet.

       “If you never had sex again, would you feel like you were missing anything? Newton, have you ever even had a sexual fantasy on your own accord at all?”

       “Dude, you do _not_ know the kind of kinky shit I’m into.” Oh God, you said that out loud.

       “That was not--” he clears his throat; he’s _totally_ blushing-- “That’s a matter for another time. How much of those proclivities have anything to do with actually _having sex?_ ”

       “Y--uh--” Oh shit. Oh shit oh shit _oh shit oh--_ “....none.”

       “Well.” He’s got that self-satisfied quod-erat-fuck-you face that he usually only gets when he’s made you look like a total idiot in front of at least one uniformed PPDC officer. “There you have it.”

       There you have _what?_ You mean, yeah, you’ve been to a Pride or two in your time, you’ve seen the A’s in the acronym before, but, like, _nobody_ wants to--except Hermann does, he does, it’s _real--_

       You collapse backwards onto the bed, a hysterical snort forcing its way out through your tear ducts. You’re thirty-five years old and it took someone basically beating you over the head with it to realize that people don’t have to be tricked into reproducing by societal fiat.

       At some point today you’re going to _have_ to run out of nervous breakdowns, right?

       You hear the clatter of a saucer. Hermann has reclaimed his teacup. “Don’t start up again, dear.”

       “Fuck off!” You groan laughingly into your pillow. The ‘it’ to be lost is yours, so you get to decide how to lose it. Eminent domain and all that shit. Imminent dumbass. Itinerant dickhead.

       God, you really need to sleep.

       You wrench your anvil-heavy head off the pillow. “Listen, dude, dude. Listen. I gotta, like, I can’t--”

       “Do you need some time alone?”

       “No!” Definitely not --the Drift is still tugging at you, and even if it wasn’t, you’ve got so much you need to talk about-- “I just gotta sleep, dude, or I’ll really be in trouble.”

       “I see.” He puts down his tea. “In that case, may I join you? I can’t stay on this godforsaken chair another moment.” He must see you seize up, because he immediately clarifies. “To _sleep_ , Newton.”

       You want it, you want it so _bad_ , but in the morning--

       No. Fuck it. You saved the world. Fuck it and fuck you. You deserve this one good thing. You’re going to pry the vise off your lungs and you’ll worry about the morning when the morning comes because you just physically cannot worry any more right now. In this moment, you’re just going to love him. You’re going to love him and _believe_.

       “Go brush your teeth first, dude.”

       He scrapes his way to your bathroom, muttering about _I was obviously going to do that_ and _you’re covered in God only knows what_ _but you put on airs_ and _I thought I was supposed to be the fastidious one_ , but you can feel him smiling.

**Author's Note:**

> If anyone thinks I need more (or fewer) warnings in the tags, please let me know.


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